


Hello From The Other Side

by notabadday



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 22:12:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5066329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notabadday/pseuds/notabadday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alone on the blue planet, Jemma clings to her cell phone as a lifeline to Fitz and to home. Written between 3x04 and 3x05.</p><p>
  <i>Jemma moves her thumb across the glass screen before pushing the home button down and tapping in her password: JSLF. 5-7-5-3. She hits the call icon, still open on ‘Recents’, and he’s waiting for her. Last number dialed. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>Disturbing the eerie silence, she says, “Hello. It’s me.” </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hello From The Other Side

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't stopped listening to the new Adele song and this is the result. Oh, and there was that heart-stopping sneak peek too. This is nothing too fancy but I had the idea and ran with it.

**_24 hours_** _-_ _78% battery_ :

 

The sunrise that Jemma was counting on never comes.

 Her first cautious exploration of the barren land finds little of interest, dim light complicating her efforts. Jemma Simmons as an eager young cadet might have keenly studied the rock formations or placed the planet’s mysteries in sealed bags – “B is for blue is for biological” – but this Jemma is preoccupied with her search for an escape route, another portal perhaps or signs of previous inhabitants. _Any hint of a way out would do nicely_ , she thinks to herself, mustering optimism as best she can.

 She sits dejectedly in the thick blue sand with her legs crossed and her hands lying limply in her lap. Heavy sighs seem to come with every breath, the different level of oxygen saturation taking its toll. She reaches into the back pocket of her jeans and takes out her phone.

 Jemma moves her thumb across the glass screen before pushing the home button down and tapping in her password: JSLF. 5-7-5-3. She hits the call icon, still open on ‘Recents’, and he’s waiting for her. Last number dialed.

 Disturbing the eerie silence, she says, “Hello. It’s me.” Fear reveals itself in the tremble of her voice.

 She pulls the phone away from her ear before it can warm against her skin. His caller ID lights up the screen. He’s not smiling in the picture; it’s from their time at the academy, an oldie but a goodie. She smiles at the memory of forcing him to stand still for “just a second” so that she can take the picture, and him squirming in the spotlight. It’s only now that she notices the blush in his cheeks.

 Seeing the battery life diminishing with every second the phone is lit up with his face, she forces herself to hang up the impotent call. That's what prompts the first tear.  

 

***

 

 ** _60 hours_** \- _off_ :

 

 “I don’t see any way home from here. I’m gonna need you to do what you do best, Fitz, and figure this thing out from your side.”

 Walking determinedly across unfamiliar terrain, she clings to her phone as she talks to him. It’s switched off. She’s conserving battery. No more indulgently perusing through her camera roll to remind herself of happy memories. Less of the voice notes about the monolith. Definitely no Candy Crush Saga.

 “I just have to… stay alive. You’ll figure it out. I know you will.”

 Suddenly an idea strikes, injecting her with a rare burst of enthusiasm. “You should get Bobbi to help! With the biological elements of your research. I’m not saying you’re a slacker when it comes to the biochem side of our work but, well, you’d say yourself it’s not your forte. I mean, you’d be _brilliant_ at it if only you’d apply yourself, but Bobbi might be a good extra set of eyes.” And then she remembers. “If she’s okay, that is. I’m sure she is.”

  “Can’t think about that now,” Jemma tells herself.

 She trudges a little further before stopping to catch her breath. She’s still adapting to the atmospheric variants.

 

***

 

 ** _404 hours_** _\- off_ :

 

Jemma’s sitting on a cluster of rocks, looking over a small, fertile plot of land she’s found. A human skeleton she had discovered days earlier remains untouched only meters away from her. It had been a glimmer of hope in some ways, an opportunity to study the specimen for something close to answers. Though she’s used to dissecting all kinds of lifeforms for scientific study, the aged skeleton quickly transforms in her mind to a harbinger of death. It disturbs her. Sleep is shallower than ever – when it comes at all.

 From the bones she’s examined, she would guess that the skeleton is well over a hundred years old, but it’s impossible to ascertain without further study, without all of her tech. There’s also a strong chance that due to the atmospheric differences, the rate of decomposition varies to that on earth and, therefore, any analysis of bones would provide only unreliable findings. She’s given up believing there are answers to be found in the bones of a stranger, probably an unlucky sod who wound up there the same way she did, but she has to believe that it hasn’t been a hundred years since a human walked this planet.

 “So much for time heals all wounds,” Jemma tells him, her fingers tightening their grasp of the iPhone that she won’t let go of. “I’m a little more broken every day. I feel pieces breaking off.”

 Exhaustion brings the northern out in her voice as she continues: “I just want to go home. You are coming, Fitz? I need you.”

 The hand clutching her phone moves to her forehead, the glass screen resting against her skin as she weeps. Jemma closes her eyes and imagines, just for a moment, that he’s there with her, his forehead resting against hers. A sob escapes before she manages to calm her breathing and look around for whatever’s next.

 

***

 

 ** _1,545 hours_** _– 54% battery_ :

 

Her phone’s been off for weeks. Every excuse to turn it on has been reluctantly dismissed by rational thinking, but a long overdue moment of impulse brings her to switch it on.

 The bright little apple logo appears. A small smile lifts her cheeks.

 5-7-5-3.

 The call icon taunts her but she knows it would be fruitless to try. Her eyes scan the top of the screen for signal bars and 3G and she curses herself for the notion. Nothing. Of course, nothing. The international minutes in her contract are hardly going to cover this wasteland of a planet. She opens her voice notes instead.

 Jemma lifts the bottom of the iPhone to her lips. “Fitz.” It's a relief to say his name. His beautiful, silly name. “There’s so much distance between us – a million miles. And I know it’s been weeks,” she sighs heavily, tears pricking her eyes and settling on her waterline. She’s so over the tears that she doesn’t take any notice as they blind her. “I won’t give up if you won’t.”

***

 

 ** _1,930 hours_** _– off_ :

 

The wind, heavy with dust, whips past the hiding spot that Jemma’s found for herself. She sits sheltered by a rock formation, which acts as a convenient windbreaker while also shielding her from view. Her knees are pulled tight to her chest. It’s a moment of calm, a pause allowing her to catch her breath in a lucky spot she’s discovered after hours of running. Something is chasing her but she doesn’t know what, chooses not to wonder. Instead, she picks up her phone. She needs him.

 “Me again,” she begins, grief burning her throat. “I keep thinking about our lives before this, before the chaotic unknown took us by the chokehold. It’s my fault. No one else to blame. You followed me into the field, onto the Bus,” she remembers wistfully, drawing lines in the sand with a rock as she holds the phone to her ear like it’s on and like he’s at the other end of the line.

 “We were so young. And free. What did we have to worry about back then? I don’t even remember. Then we got swept up in all this. And you changed. For worse and for better. _Better_ , really. It’s only hard to imagine you changing for the better because you’re perfect, always have been.” She’s too exhausted to wipe tears away or pull herself back from the brink. “You were so reluctant to come but I swear, I think you were better at it than I was in the end. So heroic. And good. That’s the best thing. You are good. That’s what I love the most.”

 She rests her head against her knees. “ _You_ can do this.”

 Jemma takes a deep breath. There’s an ache in her chest as she inhales.

 

***

 

 ** _2,344 hours_** _– 25% battery_ :

 

“Hello from…” She pauses to take in her surroundings, despondence marking her face with harsh lines gathering dust. Jemma looks at the blue hell that surrounds her and winces. “…the other side. I must have called a thousand times now. Signal’s terrible,” she says with an empty laugh.

 The low battery warning flashes up. Her heart stops. _No. No, it can’t be already_. Her hand shakes holding the device to reread it before her finger wills away the notification. She’s tried desperately hard to conserve battery, barely having turned it on for weeks that have turned into months now, and yet time is running out.

 It feels like her oxygen tank is on a red light warning. It has been her lifeline.

 “I miss you. That’s all I really wanted to say.”

 She turns it off immediately and battles with the regret that she wasted a couple of perfectly good battery minutes on nothing. It had felt so urgent.

 

***

 

 ** _3,010 hours_** _– 6% battery_ :

 

One last message, she decides. It gives her some semblance of control over her situation. To say goodbye, or hello. Just so that when he gets to her, he isn’t left with nothing. He’ll have her messages, with a final one to tell him all that she’s held back until now.

 Her throat is dry from all the sand in the air and the fact that whatever she’s been drinking is a poor substitute for a nice, cool bottle of Evian.

 Voice shaking, she starts: “Hello. How are you? I hope you’re well, Fitz. I don’t even know how many times I’ve called and not called. I know, not a doubt, that one day you’ll get here. I know it’s irrational and you’d probably roll your eyes at me, or maybe you wouldn’t, maybe you’d want me to hold on to hope as long as possible. I don’t know. It’s all starting to get away from me. I’m starting to lose you. But I know you’ll find a way through that portal and you’ll be looking for me, and I’m scared it’ll be too late. I’ll be gone. I don’t know how much longer I have in me, Fitz.

 “While I still have a little battery left, I wanted to say I’m sorry. I know everything that happened… I know it broke your heart. I’m sorry, Fitz, for everything,” she says in a sob. The phone screen turns to black. “And we _were_ more than that. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

 She doesn’t need to hang up. It’s over.

 

***

 

 ** _3,997 hours_** _– dead_ :

 

It’s so silent but for the whistle of the wind, and she aches to hear a familiar voice: her mother comforting her after a nightmare, her father reassuring her after a bad test result (one of the few), Skye begging her for old academy stories, Coulson congratulating her on a successful mission, but more than anything, Fitz calling out her name. The echo of a “Jemma” is trapped in her memory, a gut-punch as it brings back all she left behind.

 “I’m trying. I’m trying. Keep trying,” she commands him, across the universe. "I'm counting on the Fitz who worked through the night when he could easily have passed all the assessments with half the effort. That's what I need. When everyone's telling you to give up, you have to stubbornly carry on. Even when it's our guys. Even when it's Coulson. I need you to be stupid."

 

***

 

 ** _4,705 hours_** _– dead_ :

 

“How much longer, Fitz?” Jemma says desperately, searching the blue for any sign of where she started, of the little patch of land where she’s managed to find vegetation.

 “How much longer?!” she screams out but barely hears herself back as the wind dilutes the sound. She keeps screaming it, her voice getting increasingly hoarse as she tears out a lung begging him, “HOW MUCH LONGER?!”

 She stops. Breathes.

 “You were supposed to be here already. We’re running out of time.”

But in her mind, it's past. It's over. The moment her cell phone battery died was the beginning of the end. It pierced a hole in hope, from which Jemma's been bleeding out ever since. _Out of time_ , she keeps thinking. All she's doing now is ineffectually pacing. It's all for nothing. He's not coming. Maybe he's not coming.

 

***

 

 ** _4,722 hours_** _– dead_ :

 

With one hand covering her eyes against a cloud of dust, Jemma uses the other to hold her phone to her face.

 “I’m ready to come home now. Take me home,” she whispers - not for the first time.

 She sees a flare in the distance and draws her phone away from her, sliding it back into her jean pocket. Through the sandstorm that builds, the glimmer of light is unmistakeable. She runs towards it. Fast as she can.

 “ _Fitz_?”

Nothing.

 “Fitz!” She runs blindly towards the ghost of a flare.

 Still nothing. She keeps going anyway, pushing against the wind with a strength that she thought was gone.

 Then she hears him. And her name is on his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always appreciated!


End file.
